INSEAD MBA Essay Questions & Analysis 2025 - 2026

INSEAD has released its MBA application questions for the 2025 - 2026 January Intake. The essays have changed from last year. 

Previously, INSEAD’s dense application was composed of several small essays with shorter word limits as well as longer motivation essays. This year, INSEAD has combined its essay prompts into longer responses.

For the full step-by-step INSEAD application guide with real example essays from successful applicants, check out the INSEAD course on MBAconsultant.com. 

Here are INSEAD's MBA application essays for the 2025 - 2026 application cycle (January intake).

Job Essays

Essay 1

Provide a summary of your career since graduating from university, explaining the rationale behind your key decisions and career progression. Include a description of your current (or most recent) role, covering the scope of your work, major responsibilities, employees under your supervision, budget size, clients/products, and any notable results achieved. (500 words, maximum)

This year, INSEAD’s job essay 1 combines two of its key job prompts to understand more broadly the applicant’s career journey, current role, and what it entails. 

When writing this essay, walk the reader through each step of your professional journey – from your very first role up to your current position. Each transition should be tied to your broader career vision, helping AdCom understand the intention behind your career decisions.

INSEAD looks for candidates with direction and drive. What they don’t want to see is someone who appears to flit from one job to another without a clear plan. With that in mind, it’s important to show how every role change contributed to your long-term aspirations, and explain why each move made sense at that point in your career.

Aim to present each shift in your career as a strategic decision, even if the circumstances were out of your control. Focus on highlighting what you achieved in each position, especially any increasing responsibilities, leadership experience, and measurable impact.

This essay also tests your ability to communicate concisely and clearly. Avoid unnecessary embellishment. Address every part of the prompt directly: describe what your current role involves, the scope of your leadership responsibilities (including team size, budget ownership, and client or product interaction), and share your most significant accomplishments in the role so far.

Think of this as your opportunity to offer a clear snapshot of what your professional life looks like today. If relevant, you can also briefly mention a current project that showcases your skills or interests.

Essay 2

Describe your short and long-term career aspirations, including your target geography, industry, and function. How do you plan to bridge the gap between your current position and these goals, and how will INSEAD help you achieve them? (300 words, maximum)

This year, Job Essay 2 adds “Why INSEAD” to the standard career goals essay. 

This is a classic; you are being asked to discuss your goals immediately after finishing at INSEAD and what you see yourself doing 5-10 years down the line. Keep your professional purpose in mind while writing about your goals. This is the larger mission you will accomplish through your future roles and projects. 

In your short-term goal, it’s important to be as precise as possible: explain your target role, industry, and geography, and how the skills you learn from your INSEAD MBA will apply there. Include 2-3 company names and the exact title of your target positions.

Then, discuss your long-term goal, explaining the broader impact of your role and how it will contribute to your professional purpose. This doesn’t need to be as precise, but it should be a logical continuation of your short-term goal.

Now, explain the skills you need to achieve these goals, and how INSEAD will help you cover those gaps. Again, be specific; name some curricular or programmatic offerings that are relevant to these objectives. Conducting thorough research on the program – whether by attending online info sessions, or speaking with students and alumni – will help you write an impactful essay.

Sam

Jon

Zack

Alex

Malvika

Rowan

Nanako

Mario

Motivation Essays

Essay 1

Give a candid description of yourself as a person and a leader, emphasizing the strengths and weaknesses you recognize in yourself. Explain how you are actively working on your development, sharing key experiences that have shaped you, providing specific examples where relevant. (500 words maximum)

This prompt is intentionally broad, designed to encourage applicants to go beyond surface-level facts about their professional and personal lives. Rather than simply listing jobs or hobbies, it invites a deeper look at your character, values, and leadership potential. Still, this doesn’t mean your response should be abstract; there’s plenty of room to bring in specific anecdotes that show how your qualities play out in everyday situations. The question also encourages you to reflect on key moments or life experiences that have shaped who you are today.

The generous 500 word limit means that you can get creative with this essay. A broad example would look like this:

“At university, I was a force of nature when it came to debates. I won every competition I entered, and was soon elected Team Leader for our debate club. We performed excellently at inter-college competitions, and our club’s membership grew exponentially that year [Strength]. But I noticed that my debate team’s turnover rate was higher than the other teams we competed with. Members dropped out inexplicably. Baffled, I asked a close friend on the team if they could make sense of it. 

“It’s you. You tend to hog the spotlight”, she said. 

It was then that I realised that in my endeavour to win competitions and build a strong team, I had - albeit unknowingly - been upstaging everyone on the team [Weakness]. Members felt like they didn’t get a chance to speak and that their ideas went unnoticed. That was a turning point for me; I actively made an effort to communicate with my team, take their ideas on board, and make everyone feel like they were equally responsible for our success. Morale improved, and no one quit the team for the rest of my time as Team Lead [Personal development].

5 years later at McKinsey, I found myself in a similar situation. Except this time, it was a shy team member who was being ignored by our manager….”

While you’ll want to state your strengths clearly, it’s equally important to objectively present and dissect your weaknesses. It shows self-awareness and a forward-looking attitude. For example, if your strength is “excellent at mentoring people,” the weakness might be “sometimes I tend to take over other people’s tasks.” If your strength is “staying organized,” the weakness might be “not being flexible enough for unpredictable scenarios.” But rather than just stating that you're resilient or empathetic, each trait should be grounded in a real scenario to help the AdCom understand how you live out these qualities in practice (and how you’ll continue to do so at INSEAD). Show, don’t tell! 

Once you’ve established your core strengths, you can turn to one or two areas of personal growth – ideally, those you’ve already taken steps to improve. Here too, refer to real-life examples of how you have created positive impact – both for yourself and others – by working on your self-development. 

Essay 2

Describe a highly stressful situation you faced and how you managed it. What did this experience teach you about yourself and your interactions with others? (400 words maximum)

In this essay, you’ll need to write about a challenging time at work and how you overcame it. It calls for our classic SCAR structure: Situation, Challenge, Action, and Result. You’ll also want to address the second part of the prompt (what this experience taught you) by analyzing the outcome of your story. 

It’s best to choose a story where the stakes were significant. Examples include a substantial hiccup in an important project you were responsible for, responsibilities outside your scope, disagreeing with management on a major decision, transitioning to a new role or team, having to make a quick decision with limited information, conflict within your team, etc. Ideally, you’ll want to choose an experience where you had to engage impactfully with others to resolve the situation. INSEAD values collaboration and wants to see how you work with people under pressure.

We suggest the following structure:

Situation: Give context of the situation. Who was involved? 

Challenge: Detail the challenge you faced. What was at stake?

Action: What was your response to it, and what actions did you take?

Result: How did you manage the situation? How did others react to this? 

Lesson: The interpersonal lesson you learned about. How are you applying this lesson in your career or life/ how will you apply this lesson in the future?

The AdCom is most interested in how you responded. Use most of the space to explore your actions, thought process, and how you managed the situation. Ideally, you can show how you derived positive impact from the situation. Then, reflect on what the experience taught you, and explain how that insight influenced your professional behavior moving forward. After sharing what you learned, wrap up by describing a follow-up scenario in which you successfully applied those lessons. This shows not just awareness, but the ability to grow and adapt in future situations.

Optional Essay

Is there anything else that was not covered in your application that you would like to share with the Admissions Committee? (300 words, maximum)

This optional prompt is intentionally broad. It’s a space where you can explain unique circumstances, provide insight into any perceived weaknesses, or bring forward details that didn’t naturally fit into the main essays.

However, keep in mind that INSEAD’s required essays already explore a wide range of personal, professional, and leadership experiences. If your content could have been more appropriately addressed in one of the earlier essays, admissions may question why it appears here instead.

Use this space strategically: only if you have something meaningful to add that truly rounds out your profile. Whether you’re clarifying a low GPA, explaining a gap in employment, or highlighting a compelling experience that wasn’t covered elsewhere, make sure you state it directly and that you don’t make excuses.

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